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ADDRESSES AND POEM 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



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INCORPORATION OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE 



JUNE 27 AND 28 1894 




1794 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 1894 



ADDRESSES AND POEM 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



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INCORPORATION OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE 



JUNE 27 and 28 1894 




BRUNSWICK MAINE 

PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE 
1894 






PRINTED AT JOURNAL OFFICE, LEWISTON, ME. 



ADDRESS 



RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE 



EGBERT COFFIN SMYTH D.D. 



Wednesday June 27 1894 



fi~** 



ADDRESS 

BY EGBERT COFFIN SMYTH, 

CLASS OF 1848. 



Mr. President and Brethren : 

OUR centennial day, like the first in the narrative of 
creation, begins with the evening. It carries us 
back, also, as does that ancient and inspired record, to 
the appearance of light ; — light which has shone through 
the century with so pure and beneficent a radiance that 
we may gratefully and reverently say: it came from 
God, and He saw that it was good. 

It belongs to others who will address you to analyze 
its seven-fold ray, and show what has been its illumin- 
ing and enlivening power. It is my office, if it may 
only be given me in some measure to fulfill it, in the 
opening of these services to turn your thoughts, in 
grateful recollection, to the goodness which has pre- 
served and blessed, as it called into being, the College, 
which, more than ever perhaps to-day we think of, and 
love to think of, as our own, and to unite with you in 
the recognition that a peculiar value and honor belong 
to the religious element in the education for which 
it stands. 



6 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

For only, I have supposed, from some such point of 
view could it have occurred to those who have arranged 
these exercises to devote this hour to the topic which 
has been assigned me. To narrate the history of the 
religious life of the College for a hundred years is, 
obviously, a task too large for such an occasion. In 
the enthusiasm of early years I sought to make a begin- 
ning of this enterprise, and it is my hope that Professor 
Little, who has so clearly and gracefully sketched for 
us the general history, will spare from his many labors 
time to gather up, ere they are irrecoverably lost, the 
religious reminiscences of the last fifty years; but 
nothing of the sort has seemed to me to be implied in 
the duty of this hour. This service, I conceive, is a 
holy vigil, like that of Christmas Eve, — not kept with 
fasting and humiliation, albeit we may not forget our 
shortcomings, if only by this we may be helped to bet- 
ter life, — but rather with thankful remembrances and 
joyful anticipations and new consecration. In a word, 
it is a religious service in which we would share. Other- 
wise I might feel, for one, that it should not precede 
the other exercises, nor even form a distinct part of our 
centennial, unless this were distributed far more than is 
contemplated or would be practicable. If, for instance, 
I were called here to speak of the history of religious 
instruction in the College, or of its dogmatic or theolog- 
ical forms and expression, I know not why Law or 
Medicine or the noble profession of the Teacher, or any 
other vocation for which college life prepares, or any 



ADDRESS 7 

science or language or art which enters into its curricu- 
lum or has had a history here, might not prefer a claim 
to similar recognition. But our religion, — is there any- 
thing besides, in this world of ours, to which there 
belongs so plainly the right of pre-eminence, is there 
anything, whatever our differences of opinion, of dogma, 
of ecclesiastical relationships, so common to us all, so 
deep in our hearts, so intimate to our personality, so 
capable at last of binding us together in a supreme 
fellowship with each other, and a communion with all 
spirits elect and pure, and with Him who is "over all, 
blessed forever ? " And is there anything else which so 
enters into the whole being and purpose and life of 
such a college as ours has been, and so binds together 
its golden years, and hallows them in our memories, 
and has a place in its history so unique and pre-emi- 
nent? This, therefore, if I interpret it aright, is the 
significance of this occasion, and by it my task is 
defined. 

Professor Packard has preserved for us an utterance 
of the saintly Appleton which we may take as a watch- 
word : " God has taken care of the College, and God 
will take care of it." 

One marked instance of this care was Appleton's own 
coming hither to its leadership in the dark days when, in 
the summer before the graduation of the second class, 
its admired and eminent first President was removed 
by death. Was there not a similar providence when, 
more than a generation later, by the consenting action 



8 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

of many eminent representatives of different persua- 
sions, the College was so adjusted to its environment 
that its life became secure, and its work could go on 
in peace and strength? How marked a favor to it, 
also, was the singularly long tenure of office on the 
part of a number of its earlier professors, notably 
Cleaveland and Packard. 

But it is not upon special mercies that I would lay 
the emphasis of our gratitude. These we may regard 
too much from some eccentric point of view and too 
narrowly interpret. For my purpose I would refer 
chiefly to causes and influences which have worked 
through successive generations for its good. Among 
these I mention, first, one which is from the beginning : 
the recognition and erection of moral and spiritual 
ends as imperative and essential aims in the education 
which the College was chartered to bestow. 

The Act of Incorporation, passed June 24, 1794, 
institutes and establishes Bowdoin College for the edu- 
cation of youth, and prescribes that its funds " shall be 
appropriated to the endowment of the said college, in 
such manner as shall most effectually promote virtue 
and piety, and the knowledge of such of the languages 
and of the useful and liberal arts and sciences, as shall 
be hereafter directed, from time to time, by said cor- 
poration." 

The phrase "virtue and piety" is a traditional one. 
It bears a trace of the coloring which the thought of 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries assumed in 



; 



ADDRESS 9 

reaction from the preceding predominance of theologi- 
cal modes of conception, and emphasizes the practical 
turn which the human mind had taken, the stress which 
was laid on religious and ethical truth as an affair of 
life and conduct. Yet it retains no less the strong 
Puritan tradition which ever recognizes a fundamental 
relationship between the soul and God, and knows of 
no righteousness which has not the double aspect of 
obedience to the Infinite Sovereign and fulfillment of 
duty to our neighbor. 

Even if our charter contained only the word "vir- 
tue," and not the phrase "virtue and piety," I suppose 
there could be no reasonable doubt of the religious 
animus and basis of its injunction. For virtue in the 
common speech of our fathers was a quality of charac- 
ter too sacred and authoritative to be other than of 
divine origin and sanction, however fulfilled in the 
ordinary connections and plain and homely offices of 
common life. Through the century at whose close our 
charter was framed no treatise on Education had, I 
suppose, so high a place and wide influence as John 
Locke's "Some thoughts concerning Education." He 
lays the greatest stress on virtue as the indispensable 
and highest aim of education. "I place virtue," he 
says, " as the first and most necessary of those Endow- 
ments that belong to a Man or a Gentleman; as abso- 
lutely requisite to make him valued or beloved by 
others, acceptable or tolerable to himself. Without 
that, I think, he will be happy, neither in this nor the 



10 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

other World." x " ' Tis Virtue . . . , direct Virtue, which 
is the hard and valuable Part to be aimed at in Educa- 
tion All other Considerations and Accomplish- 
ments should give way, and be postpon'd to this." 2 
When we inquire what Locke meant by virtue we 
are struck both by his opposition to any narrow the- 
ological or dogmatic interpretation of it, and no less 
by the firm basis he finds for it in religious truth. Its 
foundations, he teaches, are laid "in a true notion of a 
God such as the Creed wisely teaches." 3 The Creed or 
Symbol to which he refers is now traced, in its old 
Roman form, nearly up to the confines of the Apostolic 
Age, and it may be earlier still. It is not a speculative 
or theological confession. It bears no traces of the 
process by which the primary articles of the Christian 
faith became translated into the language and dialectic 
of the schools. From a point of view purely historic 
and scientific it is a marvellous creation, expressing 
unconsciously and in the spontaneity of the primi- 
tive piety and in a simple statement which could be 
expounded by an Origen to the keenest intellects and 
most eager students of Alexandria, or taught by some 
humble missionary in the wilds of Caul or among the 
barbarians of Germany, a conception of God in which 
the clearest and purest spiritual outcome of Hellenic 
science, logic and metaphysic, the profoundest insight 

i Works, Vol. Ill, p. 61, §135. Ed. MDCCXXVII. The dedicatory 

preface is dated 7 March, 1690. 
2/6., p. 26, §70. 
sib., p. 62, §139. 



ADDRESS 11 

of Oriental mysticism, the Hebrews' revelation of the 
infinite majesty and transcendence of the High and 
Holy One, are blended with the faith inspired in his 
disciples by Jesns of Nazareth, — a conception without 
which neither the highest extra Christian thoughts of 
God, as in Platonism or the Meditations of Marcus 
Aurelins, nor the Jewish monotheism itself conld proba- 
bly have been saved for mankind by being put to use, 
and which is the burthen of the philosophy, the religion, 
the life, which to-day has promise of ethical and spirit- 
ual leadership in the century before us. And it is this 
apprehensible, palpable, definite, yet broad and deep, 
foundation of virtue which was in the faith of those 
who united in founding this college ; present to them, 
it may be, not as a formal confession but in their 
acceptance of its historic facts, in their trust in the 
Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in 
Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy 
Spirit, and in their consecration to the life of virtue 
whose intellectual basis is given in such beliefs. They 
did not, however, speak of virtue alone, — were they not 
too close to the Pilgrims and the Puritans for that? 
They coupled with it, as belonging to it and not to be 
divorced from it, piety, leaving no possible ambiguity 
as to their intent. 

Having said this they stopped. I note this as a 
second occasion of our gratitude. They set up no creed 
for student or teacher. Bowdoin College, by its char- 
ter, is open to all who desire its instructions according 



12 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

to its purpose, and conform to the conditions necessary 
to their communication. The manner in which "virtue 
and piety" shall here be cultivated, is not denned by 
particular rules. It is only prescribed, that the funds 
of the College shall be so used as most effectually to 
promote these appointed ends. The ends are unquali- 
fied, peremptory, absolute. The means are appointed 
only in so far as it is required that all who administer 
the funds shall conscientiously and faithfully provide 
those instrumentalities and agents most conducive to 
the attainment of these unchangeable aims. 

I confess to no little admiration of the reserve, as 
of the explicitness, of such a constitution. It follows 
the law and method of nature. In setting up and dis- 
closing ends of indisputable and commanding worth, it 
reveals and appoints the pathway of an orderly devel- 
opment; in leaving room for variation and survival of 
the fittest it ordains progress. It justly conceives of 
the function and sphere of a college, or university. 
Thought may not be lawless; neither may it be fet- 
tered. There is a religious meaning and end to the 
life of our College, to its constitution, its being, as 
there is for the universe in which it plays its part. It 
can never disregard this end and purpose without vio- 
lating its fundamental law. But its thought and life 
are free as religion itself. J^Tay, in being virtuous and 
pious they must be free. And the Christian conception 
of God and life to which I have referred has come into 
its history, and has always been present there, not by 



ADDRESS 13 

specific enactment or the signature of "the dead 
hand," but in the way of truth and freedom, on its 
own merits, because it is the best yet attained, 
because it has the highest and truest authority, and 
has proved itself to be the most effectual method for 
the attainment of "virtue and piety." And for this 
reason, and by no arbitrary requirement, our College 
has always been and is to-day, a Christian College. 
Some of our fathers would have said, perhaps, that it 
is so " in the nature of things." It seems to me to be 
so unquestionably in the nature of Christianity. What- 
ever else we may think of it, we cannot doubt that 
Christianity has wonderfully quickened man's spiritual 
life and ministered to human progress in all the ways 
of virtue. The most scientific investigation of other 
religions leaves it still without a rival in its ethical 
power. But one religion, apart from Judaism, offers 
even the semblance of an approach to its central prin- 
ciple and motive of virtue, the religion of the pure- 
minded, meek, and noble Gautama Buddha. But here, 
where to a superficial acquaintance the resemblances 
seemed indicative of a formidable rivalry, a better 
knowledge has left beyond dispute the uniqueness 
and the supremacy of our Christian faith; and what 
has become clear in principle has been demonstrated 
in fact by the long histories of these two religions. 
Nor is there yet any perceptible limit to the power 
of Christianity, save the consummation declared in its 
prophecy, its living hope, its undeniable progress, its 



14 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

unceasing and indomitable endeavor, and the will and 
purpose of its Founder. And so long as this remains 
true the way of this College to the appointed ends of 
"virtue and piety" will be the way in which He goes 
before. 

A further reason for gratitude we recognize in 
the devotion to our College of those who have been 
charged with the duty of carrying into effect the 
provisions of the charter. 

No similar institution has been supported, distin- 
guished and governed by a larger, or a more represen- 
tative and faithful body of men. This service has 
been rendered not only without remuneration, but 
mostly by men in the full tide of professional and other 
forms of active life. In no respect has it been more 
honorable and useful than in the careful selection and 
appointment of officers of instruction. With requisite 
qualification for the specific work in view, the mark of 
high character has always been deemed essential to 
appointment. No one, so far as I am aware, who has 
been called here to serve as a teacher, through these 
nearly a hundred years, has brought reproach upon the 
College by any stain upon his reputation, while not a 
few have been conspicuous, not only in their several 
departments of instruction, but also for their services 
to the public in literature, philosophy, and science, in 
labors of philanthropy, in promoting the cause and the 
arts of peace, in the strenuous contest for the unity 
and life of our nation. 



ADDRESS 15 

If the selection of such teachers properly elicits our 
gratitude, certainly we may be thankful for the men 
themselves. 

Mr. Charles Francis Adams has said quite recently : 
" The older I have grown and the more I have studied 
and seen, the greater in my esteem, as an element of 
strength in a people, has character become, and the less 
in the conduct of human affairs have I thought of 
mere capacity or even genius. With character a race 
will become great, even though they be as stupid and 
unassimilating as the Romans; without character any 
race will in the long run prove a failure, though it may 
number in it individuals having all the brilliancy of the 
Jews, crowned with the genius of Napoleon." ' What- 
ever besides we may justly claim for the men who here 
have taught the more than five thousand pupils who 
have sought their instructions, we recognize grate- 
fully the worth of their character. Not a few have 
been marked men in this regard, peculiarly fitted by 
nature and grace to train the sturdy mental and moral 
strength and inborn energy of the pupils annually sup- 
plied by a people not exceeded by any in these sterling 
qualities. 

Brief as was his Presidency Dr. McKeen left an 
impress on the College which it has never lost. His 
standards for it were intellectually and religiously 
high, because they had been so for himself, far above 
outward conditions, superior to incidental adversities, 

1 Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc, Jan., 1894, 2 ser., vol. viii., p. 408. 



16 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

high, when of its material or sensible resources we 
may almost say that they were 

Nil nisi campus et aer. 
On the day of his inauguration, before a student had 
been admitted, he entreated " all good men here present 
to unite in fervent supplications to the great Father of 
light, knowledge, and all good, that His blessing may 
descend upon this seminary; that it may eminently 
contribute to the advancement of useful knowledge, 
the religion of Jesus Christ, the best interests of man, 
and the glory of God." He was, says the Rev. Dr. 
Jenks, who knew him well, " a man of piety as well as 
a scholar," " a Puritan in heart," " a humble pupil of the 
Redeemer." His impressive exclamation in a closing 
address to the first class on Commencement day (the 
earliest form of our long series of notable Baccalau- 
reate Sermons) : " God forbid that you should ever be 
ashamed to be governed by the principles of the gospel 
of Jesus Christ," shows his own standard. This type 
of character, this love of knowledge and appreciation 
of its usefulness and aspiration to promote it, this zeal 
for "the best interests of man," this transcendent yet 
most practical aim — the glory of God, have marked 
and lighted up the history of our College from that 
early day until now. The education given has been 
most profoundly practical, for it has helped to make 
men. It has been most real, for it has never lost the 
sense of the value of life, nor of an end which is fit 
to be followed because of its own intrinsic and abso- 



ADDRESS 17 

lute worth. It has touched the deepest springs of 
motive, and worked from the centre of personality, 
because it has been given by men whose own person- 
alities commanded respect and who were themselves 
in living touch with the One Person they delighted 
to confess, the only perfect type of character and the 
glorious ideal of our humanity. 

Cicero, in the de Legibus, in words some of which 
have been applied to the poet Herbert at "Westmin- 
ster school, puts into the mouth of Atticus a senti- 
ment which comes home to us as we return to these 
scenes of our early training. "We are moved," says 
Atticus, " I know not in what way, by the very places 
in which are present the vestiges of those whom we 
love and admire. Indeed even our own Athens itself 
no longer delights me by the magnificent edifices and 
exquisite arts of the ancients as by the remembrance 
of its eminent men, where each was wont to dwell, 
where to sit, where to teach." 1 Imperishably dear to 
us, here or elsewhere, is every spot that associates itself 
with the pleasures, the fresh awakenings, the early 
growths of our lives, — the brook in which as boys we 
fished, the river, pond or bay on which we rowed or 
sailed, the hills we climbed, the roof that sheltered us. 
More memorable to us still are the place and the 

iMoveinur enim nescio quo pacto locis ipsis, in quibus eorum, quos 
diligimus aut admiramur, adsunt vestigia. Me quidem ipsae illae nostrae 
Athenae non jam operibus magnificis exquisitisque antiquoruni artibus 
delectant quam recordations summorum virorum, ubi quisque habitare, ubi 
sedere, ubi [qui, ed. Klotz\ disputare sit solitus, studioseque eorum etiam 
sepulcra contemplor. Be Leg. II. 2, § 4. 

2 



18 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

influence which stirred within ns some eager intellectual 

aspiration we have never lost, some undying sense of 

law or order and method in the transitory scenes and 

events of our existence. And our strongest and most 

cherished associations, those we most love to date from 

and that most of all seem to have become part of our 

being, always, I imagine, have in them the most of 

what is ethical and spiritual. They come to us through 

persons, and quicken us in our deepest personality. 

They lead us up to 

" truths that wake, 

To perish never/' 

on and out to the good which is unseen and eternal. 
Such associations, it may be, we have with these scenes, 
and, more than we may have realized earlier, through 
influences transmitted from the men of faith and prayer 
who first taught in these halls, through McKeen and 
Appleton and Allen and ]STewman and Cleaveland, as 
well as through those whom we personally knew, and of 
them all we think to-day, as did Dante of the souls he 
saw returning to their stars, that they had felt "the 
eternal breath," or as Matthew Arnold of those in 
whom his father's memory helped him to believe : 

"souls temper'd with fire, 
Fervent, heroic, and good, 
Helpers and friends of mankind." 

Nor may we forget in recalling the spiritual forces 
that have entered into our College's history the men 
who in successive classes have kept alive the fires on 



ADDRESS 19 

the altars of our faith. Although there was appar- 
ently something of declension in the religious life of 
the community at the time when the College was 
started, and a marked inadequacy of provision for its 
nurture in the young, its flame was early kindled here 
never since to be extinguished. Not a few seasons of 
unusual earnestness mark its record, to some of which 
I have elsewhere referred. What, I imagine, impresses 
us most of all to-day is, the tenacity and continuity of 
this Christian life. Voltaire is said to have remarked 
"that Christianity would not survive the nineteenth 
century." 1 Professor Tholuck once took me to a spot 
near Halle, to which the students of its University, 
early in the century, marched to burn the Scriptures. 
He lived to see an entire change of sentiment there; 
and here, as in other colleges to-day, I think, the spirit 
of reverence for religion and the power of Christian 
consecration are more apparent than they were in the 
opening of the century. 

The permanence, the abiding force, the great re- 
sults of the Christian lives here formed or trained, 
are other salient features of this history. Comrades 
we have known, here have seen the heavenly vision 
which called them into paths of service that brightened 
more and more unto a perfect day. Here ideals have 
grown clear that never faded, high born resolutions 
have been formed that issued in heroic deeds, ministries 

1 I quote the words of Professor Adams, Civilization during the Middle 
Ages, p. 387, where other kindred predictions are referred to. 



20 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

planned that have blessed many a community, missions 
that are transforming nations. In the shaded walk, at 
the hour of prayer, in the solitude of night, heaven has 
touched with its beauty and strength lives that have 
ended in its glories. 

Our oldest living alumnus, a pupil of President 
Appleton, still wears the Christian armor which he 
girded on in the brilliant promise of his youth. Our 
fifth President, 

Serus in coelum redeas, 

still teaches at one of our highest seats of learning, 
with clearness and power unsurpassed, the faith which 
in the class of 1833 he not only professed, but purely 
and nobly lived. On the Bosphorus I see a light, 
harbinger of the day which we hope will follow the 
gloomy night of Turkish despotism, a Pharos to many 
a voyager on the troubled and darkening waters of 
the Orient, — it is there because of a resolve made here 
sixty-one years ago, by a member, who is with us 
to-day, of the class of 1834. 

I may not venture thus to refer to others among 
the living, — how can I call the roll of the sainted dead, 
how speak worthily of such a man as Rufus Anderson, 
for more than half a century connected with an office 
comparable even in visible power, in some particulars, 
only with that of a Secretary of State, immeasurable 
in its moral and spiritual reach; of Calvin E. Stowe, 
at once original and learned, witty and wise, contesting 
here the palm of oratory with John P. Hale, contending 



ADDRESS 21 

everywhere and always, through his distinguished ca- 
reer, for justice and right, the same true, open-hearted 
Christian man in his college days as ever after; of 
Jacob Abbott and his four brothers, pioneers in medi- 
ating Christian truth to the intelligence, conscience 
and love of the young; of Henry B. Smith and Daniel 
R. Goodwin, both, like Rufus Anderson and many 
another, beginning their Christian confession in their 
college days; of Ezra Abbot, reading from his Greek 
Testament as he led the Sunday morning meeting of 
the "Praying Circle," a continued embodiment of 
the Renaissance in his constant appeal to the sources 
of knowledge and authority, 1 an Erasmus in scholarship 
and more than an Erasmus in moral courage, the 
scholar's ever helpful friend; of George B. Cheever, 
that fervid and fearless prophet of the Lord; of 
George B. Little and John O. Means and the Drum- 
monds; of "Father" Snow and "Father" Rich, both 
ministers of kindliness and helpfulness; nor of these, 
or such as these, alone, who here lifted high the banner 
of the cross, but of many another, not here perhaps 
in name, but at least in heart already belonging 
to the Christian host, or destined to its ranks in 
God's high purpose, classmates true and fair and noble 
in spirit and aim, whose lives have shown the then 
unrealized grace that since has crowned them. And 
what courage and hope come to us in these suggestions, 
and in this merest glimpse of the inward conflict and 

!See Prof. Adams on Erasmus and the Renaissance, op, cit. pp. 381, 
382, 384. 



22 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

victory, struggle and deliverance, promise and fulfill- 
ment, which make up the story of the religious life 
within these halls, — courage and hope from what has 
been achieved, courage and hope as we reflect that we 
are thus lifting or turning to the light but a corner of 
one of the smallest pages of that voluminous book of 
life in which are recorded the names of those who are 
dear to Christ, and will be so to all good men at last 
for His dear sake, — that long and bright succession and 
unnumbered host who shall share his triumph; for 
what here has been wrought, is what has been before, 
and will be in days to come, until Truth has won its 
final victory, and Goodness its eternal crown, and all 
that He has begun, who died for us all, and in whom we 
and all men are complete, shall be fulfilled. 

I have sometimes tried to think what the history of 
this institution would have been if it had not been 
chartered for " virtue and piety," and solemnly dedicated 
to the service of Christ and the glory of God. But the 
attempt is of the impossible. It requires us to think 
out of the history the glorious company of teachers 
who have made it illustrious, and not only these but its 
generous benefactor, whose name it bears, and the 
whole Huguenot tradition behind him; its early trus- 
tees and overseers, with the Puritan blood that coursed 
in their veins; no less, the hallowed homes and fireside 
altars, the countless prayers and untold sacrifices of 
many and many a hero and heroine of our faith, who 
wrung by hardest toil for sons or brothers the educa- 



ADDRESS 23 

tion denied themselves, but whose desire burned and 
flamed in their own unquenchable aspirations for truth 
and goodness, and in their pure sacrificial love, — nay, 
it were to try and think away the whole community 
and social order and civilization out of which our 
College sprung. We cannot and we would not do it. 
We walk here on consecrated ground, and the air 
which inspires our life is still tremulous with the songs 
that welcomed to our earth the Son of God. 

Religion gives to education what nothing else can 
bestow, "the vision of the whole." 1 It adds the vision 
of an absolute good, without which even ethics has no 
stable authority or constraining force. It crowns all 
by engendering and liberating the power which turns 
all acquisition into service — science, art, learning into 
ministry, — that altruistic force which students of the 
social problems of our day affirm with increasing 
agreement and emphasis is indispensable to their 
practical solution. I know of but one influence in 
human history that has shown itself equal to the pro- 
duction of this force on any scale sufficient to give us 
a sure hope for our own time and for what is before 
us. Were this divine power to be spurned from our 
halls of learning and from our seats of science, I 
believe that the breath of the Almighty would scorch 
them to blackness and desolation, while it raised up 

i Bishop Westcott, as quoted frora a volume entitled Cambridge Sermons 
preached before the University in St. Mary's Church, 1889-1892. Selected and 
edited by C. H. Prior, M.A. 



24 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

from the stones of the earth the men that should lead 
the nations to their Hosannas. 

But far from our thoughts may such shadows flee 
away. Our past, indeed, alone, is no security for our 
future. The College is, each year, what the men who 
guide its affairs, who teach and study in it, make it. 
Yet the great experience we have had of God's good- 
ness for the century now past is a warrant for still 
greater hope and expectation. Forms of religious 
thought will continue to change, beliefs take on new 
meanings, methods vary and improve. Justice, dear 
ever to the Puritan heart, may gain distincter tones 
and diviner aspects, mercy a more "celestial sheen," 
truth a wider sway and more commanding authority. 
Better Christians, too, we may hope will come up 
hither, and, as called of God, remain here, or go forth 
to their appointed work. But still the greatest thing 
in our College will be the character of its guardians, 
its teachers, its students; still will remain here the 
Christian type, more and more clearly discerned, per- 
haps, to be the goal of human history 1 as this draws on 
to the manifestation of the sons and the Kingdom of 
God; still ever will be heard, by those who are of the 
truth, the Voice of Him who spake to men as never 
man, who rules the world from his Cross, who came 
to give Life, and to give it abundantly. 

iKorn. viii. 19 has been interpreted as inclusive of this conception. 



ADDRESS 25 

O Thou great Friend to all the sons of men, 
Who once didst come in humblest guise below, 
Sin to rebuke, to break the captive's chain, 
And call thy brethren forth from want and woe : — 

We look to Thee ; Thy truth is still the light 
Which guides the nations, groping on their way, 
Stumbling and falling in disastrous night, 
Yet hoping ever for the perfect day. 

Yes ! Thou art still the Life ; Thou art the Way 
The holiest know ; Light, Life and Way of heaven ! 
And they who dearest hope, and deepest pray, 
Toil by the Light, Life, Way, which Thou hast given. 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 



MELVILLE WESTON FULLER, LL.D. 



Thursday June 28 1894 



ADDRESS 

BY MELVILLE WESTON FITLLEK, LL.D., 



CLASS OF 1853. 



ALTHOUGH to an institution endowed with peren- 
nial existence, and engaged in work which con- 
tinually opens up untraveled fields, its first century is but 
a part of its youth; yet the lapse of that period, in 
contemplation of the limitations on human life, imparts 
somewhat of the dignity of age without its infirmi- 
ties, somewhat of the gravity derived from experience 
without the consequent loss of enthusiasm; while the 
rapid march of events; the questions in respect of 
human destiny which have been pressing for solution; 
the recollection of what she has herself accomplished, 
inevitably heighten the sense of the passage of years 
as we meet to celebrate the coming, a century ago, of 
that gentle mother, whom time has touched only to 
adorn, and who has grown in sweetness and maternal 
power with the increasing number of her children. 

In one of his delightful letters, Mr. Lowell, engaged 
in the preparation of the Harvard address, which, he 
says, " drags like an ox-sled caught away from home in 



30 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

a January thaw," exclaims : "Why did the Lord make 
us with ten fingers and toes that we might count up to 
the fifties and hundreds and so make ourselves capable 
of this superstition of anniversaries ? " but the golden- 
mouthed orator furnished the best answer to his own 
jocose complaint, and the shining current of his 
eloquence was ruffled by no sign of the mental irrita- 
tion that occasioned it. 

The truth is that nothing is more natural, nothing 
more useful, than the observance of anniversaries 
which may serve as landmarks in the progress of 
humanity; and communion with the past is but inter- 
course with a dear, familiar friend, chastened by trial, 
and wise through experience; intercourse fraught with 
instruction, with encouragement, and with guidance for 
the future. 

This finds ample illustration in the comparatively 
recent series of national celebrations, which, as they 
have commemorated the Declaration of Independence; 
the adoption of the Constitution of the United States; 
the inauguration of Washington; the organization of 
the Federal Judiciary; significant events of the Revo- 
lutionary struggle ; have recalled, with the trials, the 
illustrious figures of the early days of the Republic; 
the principles upon which the foundations of the gov- 
ernment were laid ; and that development of civilization 
from which those principles were evolved. 

So, but a few years since, occurred the commemo- 
ration of its eight hundredth birthday by the renowned 



ADDRESS 31 

Italian University, through the interpretation of whose 
schools, the influence of the civil law on organized 
government and civilization has apparently been placed 
beyond the power of time to lessen or destroy, though 
even the victorious flights of the eagles of Rome had 
their appointed end. Other similar festivals, as for 
example, those in celebration of the three hundredth 
anniversary of Edinburgh, of Dublin, and of Leyden, 
as well as the two hundred and fiftieth of Harvard, 
the one hundredth of Williams, of Dartmouth, and of 
many another of our sister colleges, have alike borne 
testimony to the increase in vigor that comes through 
progress in the cultivation of the human mind; have 
alike summoned up a past, whether of greater or less 
duration, justly entitled by its fruits to veneration ; and 
have alike demonstrated the benefit of such periodical 
reviews of what has been suffered and achieved, and 
what may, therefore, fairly be anticipated. 

The name which our College bears is associated 
with precious memories, and the inauguration of its 
government had a picturesqueness all its own. And 
the repetition to some extent of the attractive story of 
its life, on a day like this, expressly devoted to its 
contemplation, can hardly be avoided, however familiar 
through the better qualified labors of others. 

Doubtless the people of the District of Maine, 
possessing distinctive characteristics derived from the 
situation, nature, and capabilities of the Province; 
the circumstances of its original settlement; and the 



32 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

character of its immigration; desired their own estab- 
lishment for the acquisition of higher education, while, 
moreover, distance had not then been annihilated nor 
the cost of travel reduced, and such an establishment 
appeared to be an absolute necessity. When that 
desire, springing from the spirit of independence and 
attachment to locality, as well as the pressure of 
necessity, took formal shape is matter of speculative 
interest, but the movement is said to have begun before 
the Revolutionary War, and probably speedily ensued 
upon the close of the French and Indian hostilities. 

We know that the attempt in 1787 was earnestly 
renewed in the fall of 1788 through petitions to the 
General Court, after which the legislative journals 
show unremitting effort to attain the end, in spite of 
inevitable differences as to name and location. In the 
proposed act of 1791, still to be found in the Massa- 
chusetts archives, "the particular place and site" was 
to be thereafter "ascertained and fixed by the legis- 
lature;" and while the college was styled "Maine," 
it was provided that the corporation might change the 
name "in honor of the greatest benefactor;" and the 
power to acquire and hold property was subjected to 
the limitation that "the annual income of the whole 
estate, both real and personal, for the use of said 
college shall never exceed six thousand pounds." The 
thrifty suggestion as to the name was, however, aban- 
doned, perhaps because, as intimated by our latest 
historian, some assurance rendered it unnecessary; but 



ADDRESS 33 

we prefer to believe, because general conviction deter- 
mined the final choice. 

And while the apprehension of too great opulence 
still induced the General Court to retain a limitation 
on the income, the six thousand pounds was increased 
to ten thousand, which it took nearly a hundred years 
to render an inconvenient restraint. 

When on the 24th of June, 1794, Samuel Adams 
approved the charter of Bowdoin College, he must 
have recalled the ancient friend • with whom for so 
many years he had been associated in the struggle for 
American liberty and American independence. 

The annals of the time record the harmonious 
action of these two patriots as respectively members of 
the Massachusetts Council and House of Representa- 
tives, and Hutchinson's complaints were deep and 
bitter over the reciprocity of communication between 
them, which kept both branches of the legislature in 
steady and concordant opposition. They were elected 
together to the Continental Congress, family illness 
preventing Bowdoin's attendance, thereby giving Han- 
cock the opportunity to sign the Declaration in his 
place; they were fellow-members of the Convention 
which framed the Constitution of Massachusetts, and 
of that by which the Federal Constitution was ratified; 
and in the suppression of agrarian outbreak the man 
of the town meeting stood by the Governor of the 
State in the establishment of order and the restoration 



34 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

of peace by the vigorous exercise of the State's whole 
civil and military power. 

Bowdoin's Huguenot descent, that stock, whose 
virtues cast 

" Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements 
That peopled the new world ; " 

his eminent public career, so largely contributing to 
successful resistance to arbitrary power, to the union of 
the colonies, and to the formation of the new govern- 
ment; especially the part he took in respect of the 
grant to Congress of that unifying power, the regula- 
tion of commerce with foreign nations and between 
the several States ; his distinction in the cultivation of 
science and letters; his intimate relations with Wash- 
ington and Franklin; his unaffected piety and his 
Christian death; these things carry their own lessons 
and give cause for felicitation that they are inseparably 
connected with the day we celebrate. 

James Bowdoin, the son, succeeded to close terms 
of friendship with Washington, as the well-known inci- 
dents of his accompanying the General when he threw 
up his redoubts on Dorchester Heights, and his taking 
him to dinner at his grandfather's after the evacuation, 
sufficiently show. The historian and the orator have 
alike recorded that the best that the market afforded 
for that dinner was a piece of salt beef, but have left 
the cooking to conjecture — a vital consideration accord- 
ing to Hawthorne, who declares that when he dealt with 



ADDRESS 35 

that article of diet in a culinary way, it was so artisti- 
cally done that it seemed irreverential to eat it. 

But the second Bowdoin, although filling responsible 
public positions, including those of Minister to Spain 
and to France, to acceptance, must always be chiefly 
remembered here for the wise munificence with which 
he sought to advance the cause of letters, in the per- 
petuation of his father's memory and the family name. 
Beyond the mere bestowal of land and money, his dis- 
criminating thoughtfulness in many of his gifts marked 
the liberal culture in the extension of which he was 
engaged when called home from foreign travel and 
foreign study by the news from Lexington. 

Thus, as we are told by his eulogist at the annual 
commencement of 1812, he formed his collection of 
minerals and metals and the models of crystallography 
deposited with them, for the use of the College, because, 
" appreciating the value of a knowledge of minerals in 
a new country like this, he was anxious to give every 
possible facility to this study ; " and he endowed a pro- 
fessorship of mathematics and natural and experimental 
philosophy. Yet he could hardly have anticipated that, 
but a few years after his death, the first American work 
on mineralogy would carry the names of Cleaveland 
and of Bowdoin throughout the civilized world ; or that 
the College could boast in its centennial year, in the 
Searles Science Building, of better facilities for teach- 
ing the sciences than any college of its size possesses. 
And so when he bestowed his collection of paintings 



36 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

and original sketches, that the ennobling influences of 
this and its kindred arts might be joined to those of 
literature, how little could he have looked forward to 
the realization of his hopes in the splendid endowment 
which has just been dedicated. 

It was enough that he knew that fruit will sooner 
or later be brought forth from seed sown in good 
ground, with an honest and good heart, though the 
sower may not himself be able to estimate, or be spared 
to see, the harvest. 

The classic pen of President Woods has embalmed 
for us the scene of the inauguration of the first 
President and the first Professor, the ceremonies being 
conducted, for the most part, in Latin, on a stage 
erected in the woods. "We may well imagine," he 
says, "that even the whispering pines of the forest, 
and the sylvan creatures inhabitating it, were hushed 
into silence, as they heard for the first time the lan- 
guage of the Augustan age and of the world of letters, 
here pronounced in sonorous periods and with polished 
utterance — here where the war-whoop of the Indian had 
so recently resounded. . . . And what else than the 
first notes of the Orphean harp were these classic words, 
uttered on this rustic stage in the forest, by which a 
new domain was here annexed to the world of letters, 
and a fountain of Christian culture, purer than Helicon, 
was opened here in this dry and thirsty land." Thus 
at one graphic stroke the old and the new were brought 
together, and with the creation of the instrumentality, 



ADDRESS 37 

the culture of the centuries shown to be within the 
grasp of the subduer of the forest and the soil. 

This was in 1802, for various delays had accom- 
panied the realization of the endowment, the erection 
of buildings and the organization of a corps of instruc- 
tion; but we are celebrating the planting of the tree, 
and the eight years during which the sap was com- 
mencing to run, and before the branches and leaves 
began to put forth and the fruit to form, have rightfully 
been included in the computation. Our book of remem- 
brance contains entries of the struggles of that period, 
which are part of the life we are commemorating. 

Nothing can be added to the picture drawn by Dr. 
Woods, with characteristically artistic touch, of the 
use of Massachusetts Hall for the accommodation of 
the President and his family, as well as the eight 
students composing the first class, while also furnishing 
chapel and recitation rooms. The vision of the good 
shepherd leading his little flock with his staff is charm- 
ing, although, as the rapping of the President's cane 
on the stairs summoned to prayers and recitations alike, 
the impressive disciplinary suggestion thus conveyed 
may have obscured the sweetness of the pastoral 
relation to some of the fold. 

We must remember that at this time the wilderness 
covered the larger part of the country, and that, 
although Portland and Wiscasset were flourishing 
seaports, Bangor was a hamlet, and Hallowell and 
Augusta were just peeping from the forest. Access 



38 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

to the latter from Brunswick was on horseback, and, 
according to Professor Packard, it was deemed a great 
exploit, when in 1803 or 1804, that passage was accom- 
plished in a sulky by Judge Parker of the Supreme 
Court on his Eastern Circuit — Judge Parker, who, 
elected to the presidency of the College by the Board 
of Trustees, was preserved, by the rejection of the 
Overseers, to succeed Theophilus Parsons as Chief 
Justice of Massachusetts; as was Dr. Nott, by a like 
rejection, to remain for sixty-two years the President 
of Union College. 

But, if we lost Parker and ]!^ott, we gained Apple- 
ton, whose selection was hailed as a happy outcome of 
the differences between the boards. 

It was in that year, 1807, that President Dwight 
visited Brunswick, and in his letters of travel described 
the College as it then appeared, with its two College 
buildings (one unfinished) , its chapel and " Presidential 
house." Coming from a college with but one board, 
Dr. Dwight was, perhaps not unnaturally, moved to 
refer to Bowdoin as being " encumbered with two leg- 
islative bodies," under which system he thought " the 
interests of a public seminary can never become pros- 
perous, unless by accident, or the peculiarly meritorious 
labors of a wise and vigorous faculty;" the principal 
objection which he urged being that the second board 
would not be likely to become sufficiently acquainted 
with the affairs of the institution to act with wisdom. 
But the result has vindicated the usefulness of our 



ADDRESS 39 

system, and demonstrated that the Doctor's particular 
objection rested on an unfounded assumption. Those 
letters, however, gave a vivid account of the difficulties 
under which Maine was settled, and made a wiser 
prediction in saying of its inhabitants that "in enter- 
prise and activity they will be outdone by no people on 
the globe." 

Then and for many years the coaster, the lumbering 
coach that brought the semi-weekly mail, the saddle, 
and the private chaise or carriage, furnished the means 
of travel; yet difficulty of access was not without its 
compensations, and seems to have possessed a charm all 
its own. Indeed, Horatio Bridge, when referring, in his 
delightful reminiscences, to Franklin Pierce, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, Jonathan Cilley, and Alfred Mason as 
among the passengers by stage-coach in the summer 
of 1821, intimates that their life-long friendship (all 
too short as to two of them) was the result of this 
chance association, and declares that the stage-coach 
gave better opportunities for acquaintance than the 
modern railway car. If this be so, it has not had 
sufficient influence to resist the demand for ease and 
rapidity, and upon the whole it would seem that neither 
Plato nor Cicero, Erasmus nor Hume, would have 
attached importance as the proximate cause of the 
close friendships formed by association in common 
intellectual pursuits to the particular mode in which 
the temple of instruction was reached. But the 
mention of that stage-coach brings vividly before us 



40 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

some of the claims of our College to recognition, for it 
carried him who was to become the great literary artist 
of his time; a future President of the United States; 
the rising hope of his party, who was to fall a victim 
to a state of society, happily long since passed away; 
and the son of a giant in the law, whose youth gave 
promise of equal eminence in another profession. 

The early commencements were impressive and 
enjoyable occasions. Distinguished men, eminent in 
official position, in letters, in theology (and the two 
boards were made up of such) , were always present, 
and they were enlivened by various incidents, such as 
the overturning of General Knox's carriage during the 
terrific storm at the first; the two commencement balls, 
because of the storm, the flower, amusement, thus 
being plucked from the nettle, danger; the attendance 
of Governor Gore with great pomp and circumstance 
at the fourth, and the like. It was at some one of 
these earliest celebrations that the venerable officiating 
clergyman invoked the blessing on the class " about to 
be let loose on the community," although the year has 
not been remembered, nor has it been possible to 
identify it by the excess of depredation committed by 
those particular graduates. 

Perhaps the subjects of the parts of the first grad- 
uating classes afford some indication of the compre- 
hensiveness of the training the students of that day 
received. "Whether utility be the foundation of 
moral obligation;" "the use of history;" "the power 



ADDRESS 41 

of language ; " " the solar system ; " " the progress and 
influence of literature ; " " whether the light of nature, 
without the aid of revelation, be sufficient evidence of 
the immortality of the soul;" were among those in 
1806 and 1807. Thorndike of the oak beneath whose 
branches so many classes have exchanged their fare- 
wells, discoursed at the first commencement upon " the 
influence of commerce on public manners," while at 
the second the accomplished Daveis discussed "the 
infirmity of theory," and delivered a poem on " Tradi- 
tion." 

These topics have a familiar sound, but how differ- 
ent the treatment from what they could have received 
then, physical science and social evolution demand for 
them to-day; as, indeed, the exercises of yesterday 
sufficiently evidenced. 

Obviously the progress of the century in every 
direction would find fair illustration in the parts at all 
the commencements, for the College has always kept 
abreast of the times, and that fact would necessarily 
thus be indicated. How far the future distinction of 
the student can be predicted by the rank assigned, has 
not been definitely settled. Macaulay said that "the 
general rule is, beyond all doubt, that the men who 
were first in the competition of the schools have 
been first in competition of the world," and Bowdoin 
has furnished abundant proofs in support of that 
conclusion, though the exceptions have thus far been 
sufficiently numerous to prevent the laying down of 



42 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

any hard and fast line upon the subject. As time goes 
on and the curriculum is expanded, a nearer approach 
to uniformity in that regard may be expected, but the 
rule can never be so absolute as to discourage earnest 
effort because of failure to meet its requisitions. 

That the selection of the subject of his part is one 
of the straws showing which way the wind of aspira- 
tion or of ambition is blowing in the young man's mind, 
has often been asserted, and that of Longfellow on 
" Our Native Writers " has been instanced in support of 
that contention, but "Chatterton" was the topic he 
selected, and he changed his theme on the advice of 
his father. Singularly, President Woods, on his grad- 
uation at Union in 1827, gave a poem on " Suicide," 
Chatterton being the hero ; but as Dr. Nott prescribed 
the subject, form, and even meter, what his own choice 
would have been it is impossible to tell, though the 
incident shows that Dr. Nott considered our President 
capable of anything. 

The JSTestor of the old faculty, Professor Cleave- 
land, appeared at the first commencement. Arriving in 
the preceding October, for fifty years he attracted 
attention to the College by that display of unrivaled 
capacity which merged his renown as an author in his 
celebrity as a great teacher. 

Packard, Smyth, Upham, and Newman came later, 
and to these, Goodwin, who succeeded Longfellow, 
whose departure justified Mr. Daveis' remark that other 



ADDRESS 43 

institutions not only borrowed our oil but took away 
our lamps also. 

Any attempt to retouch the lifelike portraiture of 
their colleagues to be found in the pages of Woods, of 
Packard, and of Goodwin, would be idle, while Packard 
is immortalized in the lines of one of the most cele- 
brated of his pupils and associates. 

As to him, an observation may well be added. In 
his address of 1858, Professor Packard quotes Chief 
Justice Jay as saying that the French Revolution "ban- 
ished silk stockings and good manners ; " but he fur- 
nished in himself throughout the sixty-five years of his 
devotion to the College and its work, indubitable proof 
that, though knee breeches had disappeared, the latter 
part of the opinion of the Chief Justice must be limited 
in its application or be overruled. 

The wide and varied learning, the accurate scholar- 
ship, the critical and incisive intellect of Goodwin, con- 
tinued in other fields of usefulness, the high distinction 
which accompanied his efforts here, while his remark- 
able power in debate gave him deserved weight in the 
councils of the church of which he was a member. 

~No mist separates the memories of these early 
laborers in this vineyard from the later time. They 
live not simply in the published works by which most 
of them won great distinction — not simply in the repu- 
tation acquired by the excellence of their teaching, but 
in the sweet remembrance of those daily lives of faith- 



44 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

fulness to duty, through which precept received its 
chiefest value from example. 

The charter established a College "for the purpose 
of educating youth," by the appropriation of its income 
"in such manner as shall most effectually promote 
virtue and piety and the knowledge of such of the lan- 
guages, and of the useful and liberal arts and sciences 
as shall be hereafter directed from time to time by said 
corporation." 

Those were the days — we trust, in every fundamen- 
tal sense, they still are with us — when all alike regarded 
virtue and piety as essential elements of education and 
religion as the chief corner-stone of an educational 
institution. 

It was impossible that any other view could be 
entertained. Religion of some kind has been the basis 
of education of whatever kind and at whatever time; 
and as the things of truth, of honesty, of justice, of 
purity, of loveliness, and of good report were the 
acknowledged ends of education, these were to be 
attained only through the spiritual forces of the Chris- 
tian religion by which human culture had been pre- 
served and through which it was to reach its highest 
development. 

The charter did but adopt the language of the con- 
stitution of the state, which declared not only that 
knowledge, wisdom, and virtue were necessary for the 
preservation of the people's rights and liberties, but also 
that the people's happiness and good order and the 



ADDRESS 45 

preservation of civil government essentially depended 
upon piety, religion, and morality. 

Persuaded of these truths, it was in their enforce- 
ment that the godly men to whose care the infant years 
of the college were committed found their inspiration 
and their hope ; and if a certain narrowness has been 
attributed to them, it must not be forgotten that the 
strength of a foundation depends upon the carrying 
quality of which it is composed rather than its breadth. 

" If this institution," said Hawthorne, in that early 
novel, which his fame has not allowed to be suppressed, 
" did not offer all the advantages of older and prouder 
seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its stu- 
dents by the inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep 
and awful sense of religion which seldom deserted them 
in their course through life." It does not appear that 
the severity of the presentation of religious truths pre- 
vented him from indulging in the youthful pleasures of 
the time, but in this reference is there not to some 
extent a key to the sombre undertones of the works of 
this great artist? Did not the influence to which he 
alludes impress itself upon his imagination and find 
expression in the treatment of the profound problems 
of life, the nature of sin, its relation to crime, the 
mystery of pain, the reason and the value of existence, 
the law of repentance, the cure for the sinning soul, 
with which he deals in those masterpieces of fiction? 

JSo doubt intellectual discipline and not religious 
instruction is the object of the modern college, but the 



46 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

importance of religious influence on the life and char- 
acter of the student has never been underrated here, 
and the golden strand still runs through the cable that 
moors the College to its anchorage, and marks it as one 
of the ships of the King. 

The requirement of the observance of the Lord's 
Day and attendance at Chapel exercises and upon public 
worship still obtains, and the religious atmosphere of 
the earlier years still pervades those which have suc- 
ceeded. 

If worship be necessary, and decay marks the nation 
which neglects it, that necessity has not been weakened 
in the advance of science ; the increase in business and 
political activities; the multiplication of human wants 
and the means of their gratification; the progress of 
man in the solution of the problem of self-government. 

Physiology demonstrated the experiment of Revo- 
lutionary France of one day in ten to be inadequate for 
the rest required by nature, and the soul should be 
accorded no less for its repose. 

True, the President of the United States would not 
now be halted by the "tythingman" for violation of law 
in riding to church on Sunday morning, nor would the 
student be fined "for unnecessary walking on the Sab- 
bath ; " but less rigor in the enforcement leaves the rule 
unchanged, and the reasoning has not lost its force, 
that so " outward obedience may come to foster inward ; 
for submission becomes habit, and habit inclination, 
and inclination love, and love piety, and thus, though 



ADDRESS 47 

of mean origin, may grow np a sentiment that shall be 
high, no less than a sacred sentiment inspiring man's 
spirit with all that is holy on the holy day." 

Naturally the first two presidents, McKeen and 
Appleton, both scholars with marked aptitudes for col- 
lege government, are chiefly remembered as men of 
piety. McKeen died all too early to leave a particular 
impress on the institution, although the students he 
matriculated testified in their after life to the benefits 
of his instruction ; while the saintliness of Appleton so 
marks the twelve years of his presidency as to with- 
draw attention from other and adequate grounds of 
commendation. 

Dr. Allen was evidently equally devoted to the cause 
of religion though perhaps less felicitous in his efforts 
to advance it. Of much industry and learning, he was 
a man of many works, including many verses, to which 
one of his pupils obviously refers when he says that 
the students "regarded him with an affection that was 
strengthened by the little foibles which occasionally ex- 
cited their ridicule," an admonition that persons in high 
station should be cautious in venturing into rhyme. He 
was manifestly an excellent fighter, and enjoyed the 
satisfaction, though losing the presidency of Dartmouth 
University through the judgment of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, of retaining that at Brunswick 
by the decision of one of the most eminent members of 
that court. 

The establishment of the Medical School signalized 



48 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

his administration, and may be attributed in large 
measure to his efforts, as is fairly to be inferred 
from his address on the death of his ancient friend and 
colleague, Dr. Nathan Smith, whose name is insepara- 
bly connected with the institution. The school, Presi- 
dent Allen says, assumed " at once a rank and character 
among the best institutions of the kind in America," 
and this it has always sustained. 

That discourse is a characteristic one, and Dr. Allen 
makes it perfectly plain that his views of the nature 
and merits of the celebrated controversy, from which 
he had so recently emerged, remained unchanged. 

Considering the distinguished statesmen and jurists 
who graduated under his regime — such men as William 
Pitt Fessenden, John P. Hale, Franklin Pierce, Seargent 
S. Prentiss (George Evans had preceded them), Chief 
Justice Appleton, Drummond, Boyd, and others — more, 
in proportion, than have ever passed the portals of any 
college in this country, at a given time — his remarks 
on the various professions and occupations of men are 
extremely interesting. He assigns the first rank to the 
teacher of divine truth, the next to the skillful and 
faithful physician, and then says that the ministers of 
justice, including the expounders of the law, as well as 
those "who argue on opposite sides of every question, 
may be useful, especially in a contentious community, 
in maintaining the rights of property and of charac- 
ter." "The race of statesmen," he continues, "may 
be of some advantage, although it is understood by the 



ADDRESS 49 

intelligent, that their wisest measures are such, as 
interfere the least with individual enterprise; or, in 
other words, that they are wisest, when they make the 
fewest enactments; wisest, generally, when they do 
nothing." And after some observations upon govern- 
ment in the spirit of Mr. Jefferson's first inaugural, 
he adds: "Besides, a great statesman is very apt to 
seize upon a great project, and a great project is 
usually full of mischief." 

President Woods was a man of different tempera- 
ment and of different methods. He came to the presi- 
dency though "young in years, in sage experience 
old ; " and his profound scholarship ; his exquisite cult- 
ure ; his wonderful colloquial powers ; the breadth of 
his views ; his love for all that was old, which never- 
theless did not lessen his deep sympathy with all that 
was progressive, at least progressive along the ancient 
ways, carried the reputation of the College to the 
highest point, and endeared him to all who sat under 
his instruction. The chapel commemorates not only his 
love of art in connection with religion, but the facility 
with which he applied the analytical capacity, which 
had served him so well in threading the mazes of the- 
ology, to the mastery of the law of contingent remain- 
ders. He was regarded by some as a poet, and he was 
certainly a born orator in that the highest exercise of 
his powers was called forth by the audience before 
him. He seemed to realize the thought of Gladstone, 
and to receive the influence of the minds of his hear- 



50 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

ers in vapor and pour it back upon them in a flood. 
He never swerved in his allegiance to the church of 
his fathers, but his mind dwelt on the points in which 
ecclesiastical organizations agreed rather than those in 
which they differed, and he hoped the time might come 
when they might co-operate " as parts of one common 
church," a hope significant of the sweetness and light 
of his character. 

The discipline he believed in and exercised was 
based upon personal influence and the invocation of 
the principles of honor, and the reverence and affec- 
tion of those upon whom it operated were paid him in 
life and follow him now that he rests from his labors. 
And yet how little in permanent form remains to us of 
this eminent man! A Phi Beta Kappa oration; eulo- 
gies on Professor Cleaveland and Daniel Webster; the 
address on the opening of the New Medical College — 
all perfect in their kind — a translation with an intro- 
duction, equal, if not superior, to the text ; a few review 
articles; and while these demonstrate that half his 
strength he put not forth, they are not enough for that 
enduring fame that should have been his. "Why was 
it so? Was it because aspiration filled his mind with 
ideal visions to which he despaired of giving adequate 
expression, while he lacked the ambition to leave visi- 
ble monuments to posterity on his own account? Or 
was he content with that influence on minds which by 
transmission will move the undercurrents for unnum- 
bered years, though the original source of impulse be 



ADDRESS 51 

forgotten? In that sense, a great teacher may rest 
satisfied with the work which he has accomplished, 
though the remembrance of his personality may be 
chiefly perpetuated in the long survival of regret that 
he had not so embodied the results of his intellectual 
toil that hither, as to a fountain, "other suns" might 
return, "and in their urns, draw golden light." 

The College is not, and has never claimed to be, a 
university, in the sense of a place of universal instruc- 
tion, or of an examining rather than a teaching body. 
]STor is it a school of science or of professional train- 
ing, but it is a school whose scheme of discipline and 
culture aims to fit the student for the pursuits of practical 
life or to advance in any line of further development, 
whether in the professions, in letters, or in science. 
True, the Medical School is under its charge and joins 
to it one of the great faculties belonging to universi- 
ties, and the expectation is reasonable that in due time 
there may be others, including that of theology, when 
that foolish virgin, as President Woods remarked, has 
replenished her lamp with the oil of her sister sciences ; 
but thus far the College has wisely been contented with 
its position as a school for fundamental liberal educa- 
tion, afforded at a cost that places it within the reach 
of the humblest, and has left larger institutions to 
occupy their own fields without being tempted into 
perilous competition. ISTor is it likely to change 
its essential characteristics when all the professional 
schools are grouped about it. The storm in respect of 



52 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

classical culture passed over its head undisturbed, and 
it has adhered to the mathematical and classical curric- 
ulum from the first; but broadened to open up to the 
student every department, whether in the cultivation 
of the humanities or of the phenomena and laws of 
nature, or of economics, according to the advancing 
standards of the time. The conservatism which secures 
that which is best in the past has been united to the 
progress which is essential to any future, for with 
educational, as with every other human institution, 
growth is the essential condition of preservation from 
decay. 

And now glancing back over the years that have 
gone, to what extent have the alumni of the College 
vindicated the training that they here received and the 
influences by which they were surrounded during this 
formative period of their lives? Huxley says practical 
life is a rule of three sum, in which your duty, multi- 
plied by your capacity and divided by your circum- 
stances, gives your deserts. Let us, for our purpose, 
put it thus, what has the result been of the multiplica- 
tion of duty by capacity and again by college training 
and environment? What have been the results in char- 
acter, in power, in culture, and in the exertion of bene- 
ficial influence? Doubtless in a given course of years 
there are seasons of peculiar richness of bloom in every 
college and university. Such was the time when Long- 
fellow and Hawthorne shed undying lustre on the class 
of 1825, for in that class, and in the classes that imme- 



ADDRESS 53 

diately preceded and followed it, covering a period of 
seven years, we find the names of men of such eminence 
as jurists, physicians, authors, teachers, and divines, 
statesmen and orators, as would render any school 
illustrious. Among them were six members of the 
Senate of the United States, of whom two still survive, 
one of them, born the year that witnessed the entry of 
the first class, we welcome to this Centennial of the 
College, on which he has reflected so much honor, and 
to which he has given the faithful service of so many 
years. And both before and after this particular period, 
graduates of the highest distinction, sometimes rising 
singly rather than in constellations, have given our 
Alma Mater just cause for honest pride. 

Obviously a roll of alumni upon which appear a 
President and nine Senators of the United States, a 
Speaker of the National House, twenty-five members 
of Congress, many governors, foreign ministers, and 
members of state legislatures, attests marked adapta- 
tion to participation in political affairs and the conse- 
quent acquisition of prominence in that direction, in 
respect of which it may be added that there has recently 
been nothing to indicate any diminution. 

We need not dwell on that. When we run 

over the list of our graduates — the number of college 
presidents of professors in colleges, theological semin- 
aries, and medical schools; of those who have given 
themselves to the ministry of the gospel, the practice 
of law and of medicine; to teaching and to journalism; 



54 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

review the record of their useful lives and consider the 
far-reaching influences for good they have exerted upon 
the community, we may well congratulate our Alma 
Mater upon results, the achievement of which has been 
aided or rendered possible through her nurture. 

It has been said that college education unfits for 
practical life and business affairs ; but it is difficult to 
see why in any walk of life, in any field of exertion, in 
any department of trade, of commerce, or of business, 
the trained intellect and disciplined mind should not be 
sure to tell, although, of course, there will be educated 
men who fail, but not by reason of their education. 
If Cyrus Hamlin was qualified here to found a college 
amid the greatest difficulties in a far-off land, did not 
his Bowdoin training likewise enable him to literally 
superintend the actual erection of his college buildings ; 
to bake bread for divisions of the Crimean army; to 
wash the clothes from the army hospitals? Was that 
education unavailing when he cast his own steam-pipe 
for his mill, and shut himself up with his forge, good 
charcoal, a can of oil, and Ure's Dictionary of Arts, 
and tempered the points of his steel picks? Are not 
the interests of science and industry identical, and is 
this any the less so because to obtain the highest ends, 
truth must be sought for its own sake? 

When after less than seventy years of the century 
of the College had passed, the integrity of the nation 
was threatened, and the experiment of self-government 
on an imperial scale trembled in the balance, was there 



ADDRESS 55 

any debilitating influence derived from the cultivation 
of letters or the possession of academic education, 
that withheld the sons of Bowdoin from their country's 
call ? Did not the lessons they had been taught here, 
the lessons of duty, the lessons of patriotism, the les- 
sons of that spiritual wisdom that finds its central 
truth in self-sacrifice, bring forth abundant harvest in 
that hour of peril? 

Let the names of Howard and of Chamberlain and 
of all those inscribed on yonder walls reply; while 
on the graves of those who died we found a stronger 
faith in immortality. 

The record so briefly sketched is one of excellent 
and progressive teaching; of wise and faithful train- 
ing; of successful and honorable results. 

With a President and corps of teachers, young, 
vigorous, in grasp of the accumulated treasures of 
the learning and experience of the past and in touch 
with the spirit of the time; with Boards acting in 
harmony, and numbering in their membership now, as 
always, men eminent in letters and in the exercise of 
public functions, and devoted to the cause of higher 
education; with needed endowments gradually being 
bestowed as the usefulness of the College becomes 
more widely recognized, and the esprit de corps of its 
alumni becomes more and more awakened; we look 
forward in confidence that much as she may fairly 
claim to have already accomplished, the future of our 



56 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

Alma Mater will be still more useful and beneficial 
and crowned with still greater renown. 

But the duties and responsibilities resting upon the 
College as it advances into its second century have 
increased in importance with the increasing gravity of 
the questions which unexampled progress in its first 
has necessarily evolved. 

The men who signed the Declaration and framed 
the Federal Constitution regarded equality and the 
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as 
attainable, not through violent and casual forces, but 
by the effective power of law exerted through a 
definite scheme of government so ordered as to best 
secure that sober second thought, whose operation 
renders popular government possible. 

And by written constitutions, National and State, 
the people themselves set bounds to their own power 
as against the sudden impulses of mere majorities, and 
made the protection of life and liberty, the sacredness 
of contract and the stability of private property, the 
basis of the State. 

Perhaps the most striking incident in Governor 
Bowdoin's career was the suppression in 1786 of the 
armed outbreak against constituted authority in Massa- 
chusetts, which sprang from the discontent engendered 
by the miseries succeeding the close of the Revolution, 
and which so alarmed Washington, among other 
reasons, because, as Knox wrote him, the insurgents 
declared for agrarian laws and the annihilation of all 



ADDRESS 57 

debts, public and private, "easily to be effected by 
means of unfunded paper money, which shall be a 
tender in all cases whatever." 

In 1794, Washington, in the second term of his 
Presidency, moved at the head of the troops called 
out to put down resistance to the enforcement of the 
laws of the United States. 

The approval of these exertions of governmental 
power thus early in our history indicated the popular 
consciousness that government is not a thing that goes 
by itself, and that grievances must be redressed by the 
pursuit of orderly methods, and not through the over- 
throw of all authority. 

Closely coincident with the year of our foundation 
the industrial movement began which has led to such 
marvellous results in the domain of invention; in the 
increase of production by the application of machin- 
ery; in the development of the means of locomotion 
and intercommunication. Physical science was then 
in its infancy, and steam and electricity were waiting 
to be summoned to the service of mankind. 

Stupendous as the achievements in these directions 
have been, we are admonished that Science trembles 
on the borders of discoveries to which these are as 
nothing. Nevertheless, the flower in the crannied wall 
holds the secret of what it is, "root and all, and all 
in all," and the religious instinct, unrepressed by 
science or reason, triumphs over the infidelity with 



58 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

which the century began, and answers the question of 
Pilate with the Master's life. 

But the world is not to be made over on the 
instant, and the problems of modern civilization can- 
not be solved by revolution. With the enormous mul- 
tiplication of population and wealth, that civilization 
has assumed new political and social aspects. Capital 
combines; labor organizes; and the demand is made 
that all corporate power shall be exercised, and that all 
the instrumentalities of intercourse, all the operations 
of production and consumption, shall be not simply 
regulated but conducted by the State. 

Thus the liberty of the individual and the cultiva- 
tion of the virtues essential to real progress, the prin- 
ciples which lie at the base of popular government, 
are insiduously threatened, and the old question as 
between reliance on private energy on the one hand 
and on governmental interposition on the other, again 
emerges, as between the interference that enables and 
the interference that destroys. 

It was said of Turgot, that he "was filled with an 
astonished, awful, oppressive sense of the immoral 
thoughtlessness of men; of the heedless, hazardous 
way in which they dealt with things of the greatest 
moment to them ; of the immense, incalculable misery 
which is due to this cause ; " and although the hundred 
years may have somewhat modified this conclusion, 
that thoughtlessness still keeps alive the seeds of 
peril. To overcome it is the beneficent mission of 



ADDRESS 59 

that training" and education which, apart from the 
acquisition of knowledge, develop character and per- 
fect the man. 

It does not follow that the successful actor in affairs 
need necessarily be the graduate of a college or univer- 
sity. Washington and Franklin and Lincoln were not 
college men (though each a student according to his 
opportunities), but Samuel Adams and John Adams 
and Otis and Hamilton and Jay and Jefferson and 
Madison, and a host of others — the majority of the 
framers of the Constitution, and the hundreds who 
through the pulpit and the press prepared the way for 
the Revolution — were; and at this juncture nothing is 
clearer than that in the coining years the higher educa- 
tion will play the most efficient and saving part in the 
preservation of institutions and in the leadership essen- 
tial to avert or to control whatever crisis may be threat- 
ened or arise. 

A few months since, in the White City by the Lake, 
the creation of a municipality whose location was the 
carrying place of the red man a hundred years ago, the 
marvellous material, intellectual, and spiritual progress 
of mankind was exemplified in honor of the discoverer 
of America. 

The fruits of civilization thus displayed signally 
commemorated the faith, the endurance, and the pa- 
tience which gave a new world to the old. Those are 
the qualities which, slowly it may be, but certainly, 



60 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

outweigh whatever ignorance, or unbelief, or brute 
force may cast into the other scale. 

May the faith, the endurance, and the patience 
which characterized those who laid the foundations of 
this institution, safe guarded its early progress, and 
secured the great measure of success which has 
attended it, be with its government, its teachers, and 
its pupils as aforetime, enabling the sons of Bowdoin 
in the centuries to come, in the pursuit of lofty ends, 
whether in science, in letters, in philosophy, in the 
professions, or in public affairs, to serve well their 
day and generation, to efficiently aid in sustaining and 
perpetuating the institutions of their beloved country 
and the complete accomplishment of its great destiny, 
and so to contribute their whole part to the final 
triumph of humanity. 



POEM 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 



ARLO BATES, Litt.D. 



Class of 1876 



Copyright, 1894, by Arlo Bates. 



ONCJE in this 'place I saw a poet stand, 
In all the dignity of age, ivith hair 
White as the foam on Androscoggin's falls; 
And heard his silver voice over the hush 
More eloquent than noisy plaudits say : 
" O Ccesar, we who are about to die 
Salute you ! " While all those who listened knew 
Fame had so crowned him that he still would live 
When death had done its worst. To-day the grace 
Lies in the high occasion, not the lay. 
To-day we mark the rounded century, 
And pause to say : " Our fathers have done well; 
Let us take counsel what their sons may do." 

At such a time, in such a place as this; 
Here, where a melancholy whisper comes 
From the thin breezes yearning toiuard sea; 
Where wistful sighs of long remembrance stir 
The bosom of the ever-murmuring pines; 
Here, where a thousand varied 7nemories 
Rise up to waken pride or touch regret; 
Where our lost youth lies wait and peers at us 
As if some dryad shy peeped from her tree; 
What word is fitting here and fitting now f 

We find our hearts too full for lightsome speech. 
The burden of the century which ends, 



64 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

The burden of the ending century, 

Together weigh upon us, and incite 

To thoughts of grave and deep solemnity. 

The empty babble of things idly said 

By lip alone were insidt to the time. 

Not for a day like this are gleeful song 

And amorous lay, — melodious nightingales 

Fluting enchantment to the southern moon; 

Qay mockery of life, like dancing foam 

Flashing and crackling at the wine-cup's brim. 

Not for a day like this regretfid plaint 

For all that has been, but, alas ! is not. 

Jocund bravado of high-thoughted youth 

And bitterness of grief-acqiiainted age 

Alike would jar. For, lo, here Duty waits 

With finger on her lip, unsmiling, stem, — 

And yet with eyes of passionate desire 

Which yearn for that which is beyond all speech; 

Her mien austere, and yet her lofty look 

An inspiration and a benison. 

It is in Duty's name that one must speak, 
Or let the silence prove more eloquent. 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 



ONCE on a night so dark it might have been 
Ere God had yet commanded : " Be there light ! " 
When all the spirits of the dread unseen 

Had burst their bonds, and joined rebellious fight, 
I stood among the fisher-folk, and heard 

The innumerable tumult of the storm sweep down, 
Till the earth quivered, and the sea seemed stirred 

To its remotest deeps, where they who drown 
Sleep calm in water still as lucent stone. 

The wind and wave were all commingled. Sea 
And air were one. The beaten surf was blown 

Like sand against our faces ; mockingly 
A million voices clamored in the dark, 

Deriding human might. They who upheld 
The flaring torches stood there gaunt and stark, 

And fought for breath; while yet they stood un- 
quelled, — 
For there were boats at sea. 

A woman lay 
Face down along the sand, her brown hands clenched, 
Her hair mixed with the drifted weed, while spray 



66 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

And rain and icy sleet her garments drenched 
And froze her as she lay and writhed. Her love 

Was in the boats. His mother at her head 
Crouched with white locks storm-torn; while bright 
above 

The red glare by the flaring torches shed 
Fell on white faces, wild with fear and pain, 

Peering with eyes hand-shaded at the night 
In vain endeavor some faint hope to gain. 

But the black wall of darkness beat the light 
Backward as from a block of ebony. 

The spume and spray like snow-flakes whirling flew 
Where the torch-bearers stood, half in the sea ; 

From every torch the flakes of red flame blew 
Backward, as float the blood-stained tufts of down 

Torn by an arrow from a fleeing bird. 
The wind beat down the flame, the rain would drown; 

Almost it seemed shrill voices might be heard 
Crying against the beacon set to guide 

The tempest's prey to safety. " Quench it ! Quench ! " 
The voices clamored; while the angry tide 

Leaped on the bearers to drag down and drench 
The saving flame. Yet none the less they held 

Their bright, wind-beaten torches high 
Amid the storm, and as it fiercer swelled 

Flung out defiant hope to sea and sky. 



POEM 67 

II 
Like those brave torch-bearers around whom foam 

And wind-blown spray flew blindingly, to-day 
Stands man upon these shores, refuge and home 

Of Liberty, who fled in sore dismay 
Across the seas, escaping lash and chain, — 

The nameless tortures of the sullen East, 
Where souls are thrown like dice and manhood slain ; — 

The tyrannies of Europe, rack of priest 
And knout of Tzar, the dungeon and the spy; — 

The cunning craft of Bismarcks, gluing up 
With blood an empire; — the infuriate cry 

Of France, drunk both with blood and pleasure's 
cup;— 
England's supreme brutality, which leaps 

To strike each weak, defenceless land, and leaves 
Her bravest sons to die unsuccored; keeps 

Ireland in chains beneath her feet, and weaves 
A net of tyrannies around the earth 

Until the sun can never on them set. 

Such things have been. Alas for man when birth 
Means slavery! 

Her snowy shoulders wet 
With unstaunched blood, torn by the biting lash ; 

Her wrists scarred with the gyves ; her pleading eyes 
Piteous in wild entreaty; bruise and gash 

On her fair brow, — fled Liberty, with cries 
Which startled to the stars with piercing dread. 

Daring to draw our daily breath like men, 



68 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

To walk beneath the sky with lifted head, 

How should we know man's degradation when 
His every heartbeat slackens with the fear 

Of lash and chain, — life's meaning to the slave? 
It was from this fled Liberty, and here 

She finds a refuge or she finds a grave. 
For, O America, our country ! Land 

Hid in the west through centuries, till men 
Through countless tyrannies could understand 

The priceless worth of freedom, — once again 
The world was new-created when thy shore 

First knew the Pilgrim keels ; that one last test 
The race might make of manhood, nor give o'er 

The strife with evil till it proved its best. 
Thy true sons stand as torch-bearers, to hold 

A guiding light. Here the last stand is made. 
If we fail here, what new Columbus bold, 

Steering brave prow through black seas unafraid, 
Finds out a fresh land where man may abide 

And freedom yet be saved? The whole round earth 
Has seen the battle fought. Where shall men hide 

From tyranny and wrong, where life have worth, 
If here the cause succumb? If greed of gold 

Or lust of power or falsehood triumph here, 
The race is lost! A globe dispeopled, cold, 

Rolled down the void a voiceless, lifeless sphere, 
Were not so stamped by all which hope debars 

As were this earth, plunging along through space 
Conquered by evil, shamed among the stars, 



POEM 69 

Bearing a base, enslaved, dishonored race ! 
Here has the battle its last vantage ground; 

Here all is won or here mnst all be lost; 
Here freedom's trumpets one last rally sound; 

Here to the breeze its blood-stained flag is tossed. 
America, last hope of man and truth, 

Thy name must through all coming ages be 
The badge unspeakable of shame and ruth, 

Or glorious pledge that man through truth is free. 
This is thy destiny ; the choice is thine 

To lead all nations and outshine them all ; — 
But if thou failest, deeper shame is thine, 

And none shall spare to mock thee in thy fall. 



Ill' 

As when an avalanche among the hills 

Shakes to their very base the mountains hoar 
And with a din of vibrant voices fills 

All air and sky, there answer to its roar 
A hundred empty echoes, poor and thin, 

So words come after deeds; so must words stand 
For all that men hold holiest, all they win 

By might of soul no less than strength of hand. 
What generations desperately brave 

Have fought through war and woe, through doubt 
and pain, 
To break the bonds which make of man a slave ; 

How poor are words to gather up their gain ! 



70 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

We hear with even, hardly quickened breath 

Or one poor thrill, freedom's supernal name ; 
The word our fathers cried in blood and death 

Leaves but a dying echo, weak and tame. 
"We read the patriots' roll with hearts unmoved, 

And count their deeds as old wives' tales grown 
stale ; 
The glorious fields in which their worth was proved 

Grow thick with grass ; heroic memories fail. 

O men, sons of the world's one land left free, 

What shall bring home to you the mighty truth, — 
The burden of your sacred destiny, 

The office which is yours in very sooth? 
What word will make you feel that you must stand 

Like those torch-bearers in the night and storm? 
That mankind struggles desperate toward land, — 

Lost, if your beacon-light do not inform 
Their tempest-blinded eyes? Not yours to sit, 

Sheltered and warm, and hear the gale sweep by 
Unheeded. Let the blazing torch be lit, 

And stand like heroes where the surf is high ! 
The night roars round us as if tempests cleft 

The solid earth and made the heavens bow; 
If now the torches fail, what hope is left, — 

For never was more need of aid than now? 

IV 

Yet not alone from base indifference 

Do her sons fail the land in her sore need. 



POEM 71 

Easy it were to arm in her defence, 

And on the splendid fields of glory bleed. 
The land lacks not sons at her call would die, — 

It is a harder task for her to live ! 
And who may say which way duty doth lie? 

Who tell what aid we to our land may give? 
Lo ! like the thunders by a prophet heard 

Telling the things which future days shall see, 
Far down the ages rolls the mighty word, 

The voice of God: "The Truth shall make you 
free!" 
The Truth ! Not now we fight with sword and lance, 

~Nor yet with eager bullet swift for prey ; 
Strife is not fiercest now where foes advance 

In ranks embattled, in mad zeal to slay. 
Thus have men fought of old, and thus while life 

Is made a pawn in the great game of fate 
Men may fight on; but keener is the strife 

Where bloodless triumphs upon victory wait. 

When first rude savage brutes — but half aware 

That they were men; feeling their doubtful way 
To reason and to manhood, — chose some lair 

Where crouched and huddled like wild wolves they 
lay, 
They made him chief who beat them down and broke 

Their pride with fear ; — but if he did them wrong, 
If he betrayed, their sullen rage awoke ; 

And stealing on him stretched in sleep along, 



72 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

They slew him, — doing sacrifice to truth 
By very treachery, in guiltless crime. 

Oblivion-lost, dull generations, youth 

And age melted together in the lapse of time, 
Sped from the womb swift-footed to the tomb; 

And learned of life and love a little, learned 
Of death and hate how much ! From out the gloom 

Of those dim centuries, long since returned 
To chaos whence they came, whatever gleam 

Of light glances to sight is but the flare 
Of sword or lance ; or, if a brighter beam 

Leap up a moment, 'tis the dancing glare 
Of blazing town, or pyre where in flame 

Some warrior goes in fire to claim reward 
For hardihood in battle. What was fame 

But echo from the din of fight? Abhorred 
Was he who dared name peace. All history 
Is writ in blood and stained with battle-smoke; 
While still that word: "The truth shall make 
you eree ! " 

Uncomprehended, down the ages spoke. 



But what is truth? Wise sages long inurned 
And countless generations craved it still 

With unavailing passion, faith which yearned 
In ecstacies of hope, and ardent will 



POEM 73 

Which stormed high heaven and groped in utmost deep. 

Since time's first day the history of man 
Has been this quest; and yet of all who sleep 

In graves unnumbered how few won to scan 
The open secret blazoned all around ! 

What far lands have been searched, what battles 
fought, 
What stress of soul endured; yet men have found 

It not ! And found it not because they sought 
For that which is not; thinking truth a thing, 

Cold concrete fact, their very hands might touch, 
To which their weakness, their despair might cling. 

How could they know the truth, deeming it such? 
How many ages needed man to learn 

That that which changeless is may changeful show ! 
Alters the sphered moon, although it turn 

With varying phases to our eyes below? 
Truth is not brought from far; it comes not fair 

Like delved gold drudged darkling from the mine ; 
It breathes about us like the morning air ; 

For every eye its quenchless glories shine. 
Wide as the light, truth is not formal creed, 

Or fact or law or theory ; it takes 
A thousand shapes protean, now in deed 

And now in doctrine, like a wave which breaks 
Forever on the jagged rocks, and yet 

Is never twice the same. A passing word 
Holds it a moment, as a jewel set 



74 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

In a king's signet if his hand be stirred 
Kindles with sudden light, then darkens straight; — 

So with the word npon the very tongue 
Sudden 'tis false. Truth's trumpet tones elate 

Awake to deeds such as the bards have sung, — 
Then ere their echoes die the clear notes jar, 

And harshest discords crash upon the ear; 
Till that which has been truth from truth is far, 

And they who fought in faith shrink back in fear. 

How many noble souls in ages old 

Have given life itself to testify 
That that was true which now as false we hold; 

Faiths which to-day discarded, trampled lie 
Have been the war-cry thrilling hearts austere; 

Legions have rushed their triumph to achieve, 
And with their blood have written crimson-clear 

Upon a hundred fields : " This we believe ! " 
From fallen truth to truth shall fall the race 

Goes ever forward. What to-day is true 
To-morrow will be false, and in its place 

New creeds as frail will live their short day through. 
Like bubbles on a flood, brief as a breath, 

Yet telling how the stream flows ceaselessly, 
Truth's brave illusions have their birth and death, 

Immutable in mutability. 
For truth is as a ray of light let fall 

Upon the sea, — for every wavelet bright 



POEM 75 

A different beam ; the same for all 

And yet diverse in every mortal's sight. 

It were as easy for a babe to reach 

And gather np the sunshine on the floor 

As to enchain elusive truth in speech, — 
Though changeless yet evasive evermore. 

VI 

Who then shall know truth? Who the glory claims 

To feel his being kindle with its fire? 
How amid falsehood's thousand dancing flames 

Know the pure spark of man's supreme desire? 
Stand with thyself alone. Let mankind be 

As if it were not. Question then thy soul : 
" Say now what thou believest? " That for thee 

Is truth the ultimate. The hoar stars roll 
ISTo surer in their orbits, firmly stayed 

By unseen bonds of elemental force, 
Than man's inmost integrity is swayed 

By that which is of verity the source. 

Eons through space and through eternity 

The universe sweeps forward on its way; — 
Whence, who shall say? While whither utterly 

Is hid from knowledge as night hides the day. 
Yet all men feel the current of its tide; 

We know the push of unseen hands behind. 
Man's earliest conscious thought barbaric tried 

With groping speech a name for this to find, 



76 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

And called it God or destiny or fate ; 

"Weighing assurance by the weight of doubt; 
Greater in faith because of fear more great; 

Believing most what least man might search out. 
To-day Doubt, with her sneering, chilling smile, — 

She who destroys all faiths which time hath spared 
As the weird sphinx with her entangling guile 

Devoured them whom her riddle had ensnared; 
Doubt, who with her destructive finger breaks 

Each gleaming bubble of fair fancy frail, 
And of its iridescent beauty makes 

A drop discolored, — laughs to scorn the tale 
Of other days as fable void and vain. 

Only one thing remains she may not reach; 
One thing which man can never doubt, though slain 

All other verities the ages teach. 
Conviction moves us still. What man believes 

We reverence, whether we his faith may share 
Or wonder how some wile his faith deceives. 

We feel the truth, beyond all doubt aware 
That truth lies in sincerity, though shame 

And ignorance have bred and folly mean, — 
As fire is pure although its lambent flame 

Feed on heaped foulness, festering and obscene. 

On this rests all the faith of man in man; 

All brotherhood, all knowledge and all hope. 
On this rests love. All human dealing scan, 

Nor find the limits of its gracious scope ! 



POEM 77 

Why is the martyr's name the highest crown 

Which man may win, save that it proves him true 
To that which speaks within? Lo, up and down 

The wide, cold earth their influences renew 
Courage and faith, till all true men thereat 

Are steadfast in their turn, aroused thereby; — 
Not for the thing which they believed, but that 

They did believe, and dared for this to die ! 

See where a broken host, desperate and torn, 

Reddened with blood as with the sunset's glow, 
Sweeps down the field in one last charge forlorn, 

Knowing their cause is lost, yet choosing so 
To fling their fives up in the face of fate, — 

Too resolute to fear, too great to grieve, — 
Exultant thus their death to dedicate 

To that which they through life might not achieve. 
And all mankind shall honor them, — yea, all ! 

Though they fight in an evil cause, they fight 
For truth who hold conviction firm ; and fall 

Martyrs for truth, and children of the light. 

There was a morn when all Rome stood aghast. 

Riven with a thunder-bolt from Jove on high 
Yawned in the forum a chasm deep and vast 

As hell itself might at the bottom lie. 
Tumultuous terror through the city sped. 

Mothers their babies clasped, and maids as pale 
As lilies lightning-seared, fear-smitten fled 

Up to the pillared temples, with wild wail 



78 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

Crying to the immortal gods for aid. 

Men whose undaunted might Rome boasted, now 
Were weak as cowards, trembling and afraid. 

The priests with smoking sacrifice and vow 
Of hecatombs to the vexed deities 

Strove to assuage heaven's wrath ; until at last 
The sullen oracle what would appease 

Indignant Jove proclaimed : " Let there be cast 
Into the gaping depth Rome's choicest thing." 

Then rode young Mettus Curtius to the brink, 
And reined his curd- white horse in act to spring. 

" Lo, here," he cried; " can hoary wisdom think 
Of aught in Rome more choice, to Rome more dear, 

More precious in the sight of gods and men 
Than Rome's young manhood?" 

Down the chasm sheer 

He leaped to death and glory; and again 
The rifted forum trembled, while as wave 

Whelms into wave, the abyss shuddering closed, 
Gulfing with greedy maw the dauntless brave, 

Forever deathless there in death reposed. 
We count 'his faith but folly; yet every heart 

Still at his deed must thrill, because he died 
For that which he believed, and stands apart 

By that supreme devotion sanctified. 

Woe were it mole-blind man if truth for him 
Meant vision piercing down eternity, 



POEM 79 

Solving creation's riddles far and dim, 

The secret of infinity to see. 
We scan the countless errors of the past 

And know them false, yet these were very proof 
Of mankind's truth. Brave hearts have held them fast, 

And given life itself in their behoof. 
Even at the very mouth of error's den 

Will singleness of soul build truth a shrine ; 
Truth's lily flowers, star- white, in falsehood's fen; 

Sincerity makes even doubt divine. 

See where Niagara majestic pours 

Its flood stupendous down the precipice, 
And from its thousand throats Titanic roars 

Shoutings which quiver through the wide abyss. — 
Seek not truth's image there ; but look below 

Where wild the whirling, seething Rapids rush, 
Striving in wrath and tumult to and fro, 

Wave smiting wave as rocks together crush, 
Force battling force in Nature's feud supreme, 

Confusion infinite, uncurbable ; — 
While underneath the turmoil still the stream 

Makes ever seaward; undisturbable 
The law which urges on. Each jarring wave, 

Each boiling whirlpool, while it seems to stay, 
Yet helps the river onward; floods that rave, 

Current and eddy, all one law obey. 
Thus truth goes forward. Every thought sincere, 

Conviction's every word and every deed, — 



80 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

Although they seem to hinder, and appear 

As counter-currents, — every passing creed, 
Each noble error where the soul is true 

Though human weakness blind poor human sight,- 
Helps the truth onward. Be our glimpses few 

Of that great tide which to some ocean bright 
Flows on forever; be its surface vexed 

With turmoils infinite ; hidden by spray 
And foam and spume ; its channels all perplexed, — 

Yet be thou sure nothing its course can stay. 

What man believes is truth. To this alone 

The ages cling. The greedy hand of time 
Steals all but this. From origin unknown 

To destiny unknown moves man, sublime 
In this alone, that he forever dwells, 

If so he will, with inmost being fit 
By truth's clear light divine, which ever wells 

From the deep glories of the infinite. 

VII 

Such then is truth, and truth shall make man free. 

Strong is that land whose every son is true 
To the clear flame of his integrity. 

Strong any land, though armed guards be few, 
Poor her defences, weak her armament, 

Whose sons no higher good than truth conceive; 






POEM 81 

But, each in his own sphere, remain unbent, 

Unswerved from that which they at heart believe. 
Mighty that nation, bless'd among the lands, 

Whose sons think first of country, last of self; — 
Woe were a state where men stretch greedy hands 

Grasping for place, and palms that itch for pelf; 
Whose senates have become a market-place 

Where laws are to the highest bidder sold; 
Where only honesty secures disgrace, 

And honor has no measure save hard gold; 
Where parties claim the people's sufferance 

Not for their virtue but for foe's misdeed; 
Where public trusts from shame to shame advance, 

And faction vies with faction in its greed; 
Where pledges are like balls which jugglers toss ; 

Where no abuse of place can pass belief ; 
Where patriotism means — profit and loss ; 

And one scarce knows a statesman from a thief ! 

Shall our land come to this? Is such the end 

Of all our fathers' loss and toil divine? 
Their burning hope, their faith which could transcend 

All doubt and present agony; resign 
All that the flesh holds dear, counting it naught 

If thus they might to their own souls be true ; 
If thus new freedom for the race be bought; 

And truth its mighty kingdom here renew? 
Shall our land ever come to this, — our state, 

The last hope of mankind? Shall it betray 



82 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

The high trust of its destiny, — ingrate, 

The mock of all the earth, shame of the day, 
Stained with disgrace too deep for night to hide? 

Shall our loud-sounding boasts of freedom, made 
To all the globe ; the vows of swelling pride 

Flung in the face of man and heaven, fade 
Like wreaths of smoke? 

Forbid it, all the roll 

Of patriots who have died to make us free; 
Forbid it, martyrs, great and stern of soul, 

White as Sir Galahad in integrity; 
Forbid it, noble forefathers, who gave 

Life and all life's best boons of love and peace 
In high-souled manhood, this one land to save 

For its great destiny, lest freedom cease, 
And mankind's hope be lost! 

Forbid it, ye 

On whom the burden lies; ye, by whose voice 
Is made the choice of leaders, — yours to see 

That these be men to make the truth rejoice. 
Not statesmen, dazzling with shrewd eloquence, 

Not politicians, weaving cunning snares, 
Not even knaves who claim omnipotence 

For bank-accounts, — self-damning unawares ! — 
Can shape the destiny of this free land. 

They are the hands, but back of them there lies 
The great will of the people. All shall stand, 

All fall by this, whatever chance arise. 
However cunning tricksters may befool, 



POEM 83 

Or crafty schemers turn the law aside ; 
However leaders eloquent may rule, 

Or generous statesmen strive for good to guide; 
It is the people's will which must be done. 

The schemer fears it as a slave the lash; 
Power circles round it as earth round the sun; 

It is the last appeal when factions clash. 
It is your will, men of America, 

Which yonder in the senate-house is wrought; 
It is your will, and if anathema 

Be its desert, upon yourselves 'tis brought. 
Your will is law; and if you stand aloof, 

Idle in indolent indifference 
When shame and evil put the land to proof, 

Where shall our country look for her defence? 
It is from your conviction must be born 

The truth which makes the nation nobly free. 
Though night should mock the very hope of morn, 

Hold high the torch of your integrity ! 
Speak from your very souls, and be not stilled 

By plea of party or by greed of gain; — 
Freedom was ne'er by honest error killed; 

By falsity alone can it be slain. 
The chain has strength of its least link alone; 

One loosened sod the avalanche lets slip ; 
The arch falls crashing through one crumbling stone; 

One traitor mars the goodliest fellowship. 
That land alone is safe whose every son 

Is true to his own faith and cannot fail ; 



84 BOWDOIN COLLEGE 

Where men cannot be trusted one by one 

Little appeals to all shall have avail! 
Be not beguiled by busy theorists 

Who would upon the state all burdens lay. 
The state but subject to men's will exists, 

Is wise or weak, is true or false, as they. 
It is in self -hood which makes man divine 

The strength of nations lies. J$o liberty 
Can be where men are but a mass supine ; 

Each must be true or all cannot be free. 

Far off in the old misty I^orseland sang 

A bard heroic ere the Viking prow 
Had found out Vinland; and his song, which rang 

Above the clang of swords, avails us now. 
" Thyself thyself direct! " the old bard cried. 

The inspiration of that high word still 
Thrills through us. Thrust all meaner guides aside 

And follow thy best self. Thy good and ill 
Lie in thine own sure keeping. For the land 

And for thyself thou art thyself as fate. 
~No other man can do thy part; none stand 

An instant in thy place or soon or late. 
Thine own soul be thy judge to prove thy worth, 

To try thy deeds by thy conviction's law; — 
And what were all the glories of the earth 

If this tribunal dread find blame or flaw ! 
Though plaudits of the nations to the skies 

Proclaim thee great, if thou art small and mean 



POEM 85 

How canst thou deck thy shame in such disguise 

That by thyself thy baseness be not seen? 
What though thy virtues choke the trump of fame 

If thou shouldst know them false? Better despite 
And burning infamy and bitter blame 

Than praise unmerited. Better the blight 
Of all men's censure undeserved than one 

Quick taunt of self, — for what man is is all. 
Only the truth can matter ; and undone 

Is he who for the shadow shall let fall 
The substance. 

Yet, though self -hood be supreme, 

The lowest deep to which man's soul is led 
Is selfishness. Thyself from self redeem. 

The man who lives for self alone is dead. 
Better St. Simeon Stylites, caged 

Upon his narrow pillar, than the man 
With his own petty cares alone engaged. 

!Not such shall save the land; but they who scan 
The broad horizon of humanity, 

Asking their very souls what they may do 
To help men on and up. They are most free 

Who most for others dare to self be true. 
Speak out by action thy soul's deep belief; 

Be true to all by faith to thine own sooth; 
Amid whatever night of doubt and grief 

Hold high the ever-blazing torch of truth ! 



86 BOWDOItf COLLEGE 



Men of our college, gathered here to-day, 

If this be an hard saying ; if I seem, 

Too much to play the preacher, let the word 

Or stand or fall as it to you is true. 

To-day the land has bitter need of us. 

Across the sea what myriads swarming come 

From the dark pestilential dens which reek, 

With all the Old World's foulness. Those to whom 

Knowledge is given stand in double trust, 

Guardians of liberty and of the right. 

JSTo man can flee responsibility, 

Which surely as his shadow to him clings. 

Ye are the torch-bearers; stand firm, stand staunch. 

Light all the coming new-born century 

With splendid blazon in the name of truth! 



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